News

The annual General Social Survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics keeps us up to date. During 2025, 9.5 million people volunteered in Australia in either a formal or informal capacity or both.

There is one notable long term trend. 2010 was the peak of formal volunteering with 36.2% of Australians involved. In 2020, due to COVID shutdowns, rates of volunteering dropped significantly to only 25%. Interestingly, 2025 data shows volunteering has not recovered since then. In fact is has decreased slightly to 22.6%.

The GSS contributes this to the cost of living crisis and the number of households reporting being in financial stress. They predict this year’s fuel crisis will negatively impact volunteering rates further.

The good news is while the number of formal volunteers has decreased, the number of hours they are putting in has risen. Approximately 618 million hours were spent volunteering in 2025, up from 490 million hours in 2020.